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Treasure
Treasure encompasses a set of tangible rewards for vanquishing the various Encounter Zones, or "Lairs", which are scattered throughout Arcanus and Myrror. To obtain its Treasure, the Wizard's forces need to annihilate all of the guardians at the Lair, with at least one unit surviving the Encounter to claim victory and loot the place. The general usefulness of a Treasure hoard tends to match the strength of its guardians closely. The stronger the creatures inhabiting the Encounter Zone, the better the Treasure. Some rewards are practically impossible to acquire from any other source: items that the Wizard could not otherwise craft, spells they could not otherwise Research, and even wholesale escalation of their power in the form of Spellbooks and Retorts. Description Treasure hoards accumulate in dangerous nooks of Arcanus and Myrror for any number of dubious reasons. Some treasure is simply strewn about the location of a monster lair, left there by former occupants or long-digested intruders. Intelligent creatures may be amassing valuable objects intentionally, for reasons befitting their nature or mission on this plane. Sites of spiritual or scientific interest, such as temples, towers of wizardry, and magic nodes, are likely to harbor treasure in the form of theories and secrets. These are extremely tempting objectives to any Wizard, but accessible only to those who can overcome their mighty guardians and warding systems. How Treasure is Generated :See also: Encounter Zone#Treasure When a game begins, the program assigns each Encounter Zone a Treasure point budget analogous to . It then spends these points by rolling imaginary 15-sided dice (d15) to select the basic types of objects found in the Treasure Hoard. The game only determines particulars about these objects at the moment that a Wizard wins the Encounter. Reloading the session and fighting the Encounter repeatedly will award the same kind of Treasure every time, but exactly which spell, item, prisoner, or special is found will vary. A priori, the point budget for Treasure is determined by: * The game's Difficulty Setting. * The type of the Encounter Zone. * The Plane on which the site is located. * Random chance. A posteriori, the budget is tied to the strength of the guardians. It will be a random roll of either 50-125% (Arcanus) or 76-175% (Myrror) of the budget used to generate the garrison; and has a minimum floor-value of 50. With that in mind, Treasure budgets conform to ranges given in the table below. During map generation, the basic routine by which the program spends the lairs' Treasure budgets is as follows: # Verify that there are at least 50 treasure points remaining; if not, break this loop (terminate). # Roll d15 to select an object to add. # Check if the remaining budget meets the object's Qualify value; if not, reroll (step 2). # Throw a Qualified item onto the pile, and deduct its Spend value from the budget. # Loop back to step 1. Qualifying for objects and Spending the treasure points - : To throw objects into the pile of Treasure, the remaining budget points must meet or exceed the value given in the Qualify column in the chart below; otherwise, nothing is spent and the imaginary d15 is recast (Chance column) to find something cheaper. The Spend column denotes how many treasure points are then spent to add the object. Unlike Qualifying, the Spend value is permitted to exceed the remaining budget. If it does, or whenever there are less than 50 budget points remaining, the procedure terminates. The Unofficial Patch 1.50 simplifies this process by aligning (most of) the Qualify and Spend values to be the same, represented as a unified Cost column in the table. The sole exception is Magical Items, for which the previous versions' Qualify requirement of 300 still applies. The following sections cover details on how Master of Magic handles each type of object in Treasure. They make frequent references to Qualifying and Spending points in the above chart. Gold and Mana A pile of or could randomly be added to the Treasure Hoard whenever it has 50 or more points left to allocate. There is normally a 2-in-15 chance of selecting each, but this can rise to a near-certainty if the Encounter Zone simply doesn't have enough budget points left to Qualify for more expensive objects. It is possible to find multiple piles of between 10 and 200 of either type of asset, and their amounts are all determined when the map is generated. While the Spend value of both resource types is a fixed 200 regardless of the amount awarded; if the budget left is lower than the amount picked by the computer, the final reward will be reduced to the highest multiple of 10 that is less than, or equal to, the remaining points. On the other hand, the amount will not be increased to fill the budget if it is less, even if Spending the points is certain to terminate the process of generating Treasure. The Unofficial Patch 1.50 changes the amount of budget points spent for and , in addition to increasing both their frequency of appearance, and amounts per instance of adding them. In this game version, the points taken out of the budget will exactly match the amount of the resource awarded. This will then yield either - , or - ; or as many of either as the budget can afford. Spells A maximum of one Spell may appear in Treasure, although only if there is no Special reward. A default Spell Rarity for the spell is determined during the world generation process (before the game begins), but the Realm of the spell, and the exact spell that appears, is only determined when a Wizard pops the Encounter Zone. It will not necessarily be of the default Rarity, but the game generally does use that as a starting point (more on this below). When a Spell is rolled by the d15 during map generation (a 3-in-15 chance with each iteration as described above), the program makes a special die roll, this time a d4, to set the spell at one of the four levels of Rarity: Common, Uncommon, Rare, or Very Rare. If the site does not Qualify - based on its remaining budget for loot -, for a spell of the magnitude generated, or a Very Rare spell is already part of the hoard, then the roll is discarded: no points are spent, and the program returns to rolling d15's for other items (i.e. it will not try to award a lower Rarity spell even if there is no Spell or Special in the pile yet). If the Spell roll does Qualify, then its Spend value gets deducted from the site's remaining loot budget. If there is already a Spell in the loot pile, the new one's Rarity value (1, 2, 3, or 4) gets added to what's already in there, resulting in a higher default Rarity, up to the maximum of Very Rare. Resolving Spells Found :To determine the actual reward, the game first chooses a Realm at random - - from the conquering Wizard's bookshelf. Then, it attempts to award a random spell, of the default Rarity specified at the worldgen, and of the color chosen at that instant; i.e., Uncommon → → . :With one Spellbook in the chosen color, the Wizard may obtain, at best, an unknown Common or Uncommon spell of that school; Rare spells are possible with two books; and Very Rare if having at least three books. It should normally be possible to obtain any spell at any time, except for and the , which are never awarded. However, due to a bug in the v1.31 (and v1.40) game code, spells can only ever actually be found by players who possess either of the - completely unrelated - Alchemy or Warlord Retorts. :If the Wizard already has all spells of the Rarity and Realm specified by the Treasure, the game will first attempt to reward a higher level spell, or failing that, a lower level spell, of the same Realm. It is therefore possible to find a Very Rare spell in a place meant to yield a Common one, and vice versa, simply depending on the circumstances. Should the Wizard's bookshelf be insufficient to learn a spell of the default Rarity, the game will typically try first for the highest level spells that can be obtained from the chosen Realm. The only exceptions are a Rare default with a single book, or a Very Rare one with 2 books: in these cases, the program starts with trying to award Common spells instead of Uncommon and Rare respectively. :Either way, once the Realm is chosen, it can only be rerolled if the Wizard knows every spell that they can from it. In the off chance that they already know all of the spells that could be awarded, absolutely nothing will appear in the Spell's place (i.e. there is no replacement reward for this Treasure type). Towers of Wizardry : A Tower of Wizardry is an ancient stronghold of magical research and will always yield a Spell when captured (unless it contains a Special instead). During map generation, the first item of Treasure rolled by the d15 at these sites will always be a Spell, and the Spend value of adding it to the hoard is discounted by 100 points. The Qualify value is also completely ignored. v1.50 Changes :As noted in the table above, the Unofficial Patch 1.50 triples the Treasure value of Spells which, because of the new Cost of Common Spells, means that this type of Treasure may no longer be found in unguarded Encounter Zones. However, this is not the only change. spells may now only be found if the default Rarity of the Spell to be awarded is Uncommon or lower. In addition, rarity values may no longer be added together to result in a higher default; meaning that if there is already a Spell in the pile, any further ones will cause an immediate reroll of the d15 to select a different Treasure type instead. :While the base chance for finding Spells is slightly increased, the higher costs and inability to combine the rewards, coupled with the significantly bigger budget drain of and , generally results in lower average Rarities overall. Finally, Towers of Wizardry are no longer guaranteed to reward a Spell, or get a discount for containing one. The Treasure generated for Towers still starts with a Spell Rarity roll (d4), but this will only be added to the hoard if the Cost of the resulting Rarity fits the Tower's (initial) Treasure budget. Although this typically won't pose a problem for the lower Rarities (Towers also have increased budgets in this patch), on the "Easy" and "Normal" Difficulties, the changes remove the possibility of finding a Very Rare default Rarity Spell in a Tower entirely. A Prisoner A single Prisoner might be held at any Encounter Zone. Such an individual will always be one of the 24 non-champion Heroes in the game, drawn at random from those who are not already in active service or resting in peace. These captive V.I.P.s will offer to join the liberating Wizard at zero hiring fee, and in total disregard of their normal requirements, out of gratitude for being rescued. This is essentially equivalent to a spell cast at the location of the Encounter Zone upon victory. Exactly which Hero appears at the site is determined at the moment the Treasure is awarded. If hired, the Hero will be ready to deploy immediately. An Encounter Zone needs at least 400 treasure points to Qualify for adding a Prisoner to its hoard, and it will Spend 1,000 points to add it, quite possibly exhausting its budget. Failed Prisoners : It should be noted that if the army which captures and occupies the prison lair's tile is nine units deep; or they are controlled by a Wizard who already has a full compliment of six Heroes in their service, the Prisoner will fail to show up altogether. There won't even be a notification of the missed opportunity. Most unfortunately of all, Absolutely Nothing appears in place of a Prisoner in this case (i.e. there is no replacement reward). v1.50 Changes :The Unofficial Patch 1.50 removes the 9-unit constraint from finding Prisoners, so long as there are adjacent land tiles for them to spawn on; while also greatly reducing the amount of points deducted from the Treasure budget for adding a Hero. Specials When a Special is rolled (2-in-15 chance), and the budget has the necessary 1,000 points to Qualify for adding this type of loot, the game immediately discards all of the other Treasure, and replaces it with one or two Spellbooks and/or Retorts. Technically, the rest of the Treasure is actually not immediately discarded, but only when the process terminates, which matters in the Unofficial Patch 1.50 (since it removes this feature). However, in the official version (and Insecticide), this makes no practical difference, as the end result is the same: Specials exclude all other Treasure types from being found at the same site. Exactly which Specials appear is only determined at the moment of victory. These assets will be added to the Wizard's profile and begin taking effect that turn. About three-quarters of Specials found will be Spellbooks. Their color depends on the type of the Encounter Zone (and possibly random chance). Retorts are not subject to any limitations (and ignore any pre-requisites), save that Myrran will never appear. Any strong Encounter Zone could harbor a Spellbook or Retort, and they are considered the ultimate possible rewards in Treasure. The Qualify values needed are 1,000 budget points for one pick, and 2,000 points for two. While the Spend value is 3,000 in either case, this is largely irrelevant, for there will be no other Treasure in the end, once the dice land upon a Special. Myrran Nodes on high Difficulty Settings are the best source of Specials. Working from their massive budgets, these Nodes make reams of die rolls for adding various objects to the hoard, and chances are that they will eventually acquire one. Spellbooks of and do not appear in Nodes, so the prospects of obtaining these during the course of a game are much less certain. Failed Specials :Some restrictions apply when finding Specials, and they may be replaced with an Artifact (see below), or not awarded at all in a few cases. :* If the treasure fails to award any of its Specials, a single Artifact appears. This happens when a Wizard has a full profile of 13 books and 6 Retorts, and/or when the Special(s) offered by the lair end up consisting entirely of or Spellbooks opposing the Wizard. :* If the Treasure is 2 Specials, and exactly one of these ends up being a forbidden or book, then that Special is wastefully discarded and no Artifact appears in its place. Only the remaining, valid Special appears. :* If the Wizard has 13 books, but fewer than 6 Retorts, the default 26% chance of a Retort appearing goes up to 100%. :* If the Wizard has 6 Retorts, but fewer than 13 books, the default 74% chance of a book appearing goes up to 100%, but the above caveats on and books still apply. :* The two-pick retorts (Warlord, Channeler, Divine Power, Infernal Power, and Famous) do not fail on account of a Wizard having 5 Retorts. They are awarded, as normal, if the loot pile holds 2 Specials and happens to roll them. However, they are only valid on the first roll, and are rerolled automatically if there is only one pick left. Artifacts :Magical Items frequently occur as part of the normal loot in an Encounter Zone. Artifact is a term occasionally used for a peculiar case: the item awarded in place of a "Failed Special" (it actually denotes an item grade, as described in the article on Magical Items). Although the Official Strategy Guide claims that this sort of item could be any one of the 250 prefabricated Magical Items in the game, with no limitations on its potential strength, this is not the case in practice. :In fact, all restrictions dealt with in the next section on Magical Items apply here, and moreover, the "Artifact" is limited to a narrow value range of . While this prevents a "Failed Special" from being atrocious, it also prevents it from being of real use to a Wizard who already has 13 Spellbooks, 6 Retorts, and enough military muscle to defeat the sort of monsters who typically guard Specials. v1.50 Changes :The Unofficial Patch 1.50 greatly reduces the frequency of Specials appearing in Treasure. Although they now cost less budget points (800 per pick), and no longer remove all other Treasure; the chance for adding them is only 1-in-15, which is further reduced by an immediate percentile roll, that will discard (reroll) this Treasure type 45% of the time. Given the overall reduction of Treasure budgets (especially on the lower Difficulties), and the increased amount of points spent on almost every other type of Treasure, Specials are fairly rare occurrences in this patch. This makes the fact that "Failed Specials" now award higher quality items ( maximum value per wasted pick) somewhat redundant. Magical Items During map generation, the game has a 5-in-15 chance of rolling Magical Items as it stocks an Encounter Zone. Items are therefore a common occurrence whenever the lair's budget can meet their Qualify value of 300 points. Up to three Items can be added to a single Treasure Hoard, although their Spend range is a fairly high 400 - 3,000, determined randomly (in increments of 100) at the time of adding one. This is supposed to set the value range of the rewarded Item, but does not actually do so in the official game, due to a coding bug. The sections below group Items together under specific terms as they apply to Treasure in v1.31. There is a large set of premade items that can appear within Treasure for any Wizard who captures a lair with an Item in it. Those aside, most premade items may be obtained by Wizards who have certain amounts of Spellbooks in their profile. Finally, there is a small set of items that have impossibly-large Spellbook requirements, and will never be awarded in Treasure under any circumstances. Spellbook Requirements :Most of the 250 premade items in the game require the Wizard to possess an arbitrary number of Spellbooks in arbitrary Realms before they can possibly turn up in a Treasure pile. It does not make much sense (it's the result of another bug, after all), but if a Wizard does not have the Spellbooks required by an item in the database, then they simply cannot find it in Encounter Zones; their only chance of acquiring it is from a Merchant. :Stat bonuses listed for an item, such as "+4 Attack" or "-4 Spell Save", do not cause the item to require Spellbooks. But if it has properties associated with a Realm, such as , , , etc., it may require Spellbooks, but not in the correct color. The result is a situation where some players will have access to exotic items with powers they couldn't enchant on their own, while others (mainly and Wizards) will get a rather inferior pool of random items in their loot. :The technical reason for this is a systemic problem with the game file ITEMDATA.LBX, and the accompanying utility ITEMMAKE.EXE likely used to produce it. ITEMMAKE stores a book requirement (such as "2") to match the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or 4th property for the item. But the game interprets this positioning as the required Realm, instead; 1st is books, 2nd is , 3rd is , and 4th is . To give an example: :; Living Bow ::Living Bow has two properties. is the first property and requires no books. is the second property, and requires four books. Accordingly, the game interprets this to mean the item demands and to be found. This applies to any item created or altered with the original ITEMMAKE.EXE supplied with the game. :Aside from spell rank requirements, the official version is completely indiscriminate with item types, specs, and values when it awards Items in Treasure. The uncared-for "Axe of Uncaring" has the same probability of appearing as the insanely-expensive "Theodores Liberator" or, in the case of a Wizard with at least , the unquestionably-useful "Helm of Trollish Might". The strength of the Encounter Zone does not matter. However, each prefab item can only appear once in every campaign, regardless of source; and items sacrificed for may not reappear again either. Should the game run out of pre-generated items to award, it will start creating Magical Items from scratch (see the main article for more details). :In all, the technical problems generate these trends: :* Requirements tend to be dominated by and ranks, as the Realm-specific Item Powers are usually the 3rd and 4th abilities listed, corresponding to these Realms' index numbers. :* No Spellbooks are required for finding any item — not even the ones with Realm powers (since that would require there being five properties on the item). :* Spell Charges and do not generate rank requirements; the former because it depends on spell Research rather than available ranks to enchant in the game, the latter because of yet another bug in the ITEMMAKE.EXE utility. :* A crammed / / shelf will gain access to some of the more exclusive items. List of Generally-Available Items List of Conditionally-Available Items List of Forbidden Items v1.40 Changes :The unofficial Insecticide patch corrects most of the original game's item-related bugs, in addition to completely removing the Spellbook-requirement mechanic from Items found as Treasure. It also includes fixed versions of the ITEMDATA.LBX and ITEMMAKE.EXE files, although players who have altered their item data file may want to back that up before applying the patch. This way, the ITEMMAKE.EXE utility can be ran to simply correct the requirements of the modified items (after copying the file back into the game directory), instead of forcing the player to recreate their changes in a new file. :Items found in v1.40, while not being limited by Spellbook ranks, now are limited in value. This means that when selecting an item, the game applies the correct constraints on the maximum value, as set out when generating the Treasure; and a minimum value half of that. v1.50 Changes :The Unofficial Patch 1.50 slightly reduces the quantity of Item rewards, but greatly enhances their quality. The new formula for determining the budget Cost of Magical Items is × 100 + 100, resulting in a range of 200 - 5100 points spent on each item. However, the item value stored into the Treasure table is actually 120% of the budget Cost. This yields items with maximum values in the - range, which will correspondingly have minimum values half of these. Category:Encounter Zones Category:Game Concepts